To Live or Let Die: Requiem
by Dragongirl of the Stars
Summary: A continuation of Live and Let Die - from Dr. Rattmann's perspective. GLaDOS's changes in behaviour lead to his ultimate demise, as well as hers. Based on an interpretation of the lovely Lab Rat canon.
1. Live Up or Fall Down

The screams still echoed in his mind.

Rang in his ears. Reverberated in his skull.

Rattmann wasn't sure if they were real, or a memory, or one of... _them_.

Images flashed through his mind: his workmates locked in their offices, pounding against the glass walls, screaming, shouting, begging to be let out. Slumping to the floor as their bodies began to shut down, wilting from the noxious fumes of neurotoxin...

He slouched in the chair of his half-furnished temporary office - a brief displacement, he hoped, until the rest of the facility was cleared of gas. The cheap wooden desk was outfitted with a single computer monitor. No modem. Just a monitor. Blank and flat and lifeless. He avoided looking at it; he knew he would be able to see the reflection of his face on its surface.

And he didn't want to see the memory of the last two hours reflected in his own eyes.

He turned his eyes to the corner instead. There in the corner sat a lamp. A cheap desk lamp. He stared hard at it, trying to keep his mind empty. Trying not to remember.

_"Rough day, doc?"_

Rattmann shoved his hand into his pocket by reflex, fingers enclosing around the plastic pill bottle hidden there. His thumb traced the lid, ready to pop it off. There were a few doses left. Calling to him, as if from a distance. From the other end of a tunnel. Faint beneath the phantom screams in his ears.

_"You need them, Doug. You know you do."_

No. He could do this. Without the medicine. He could do this.

_"Doug..."_

He forced his hand from his pocket and set it on the desk in a tight fist. His knuckles were whitening with the strain. He focussed on the tension, training his mind explicitly on the sensation of his hand against the surface of the desk.

_Skin and wood. Skin and wood._ He could do this.

Rattmann started listing all the bones of the human hand by their scientific names. He felt his blood pressure beginning to rise.

_"...Doug..."_ The lamp.

_"Doug." _The pills.

_"Doug..."_

_"Doug. Doug. Doug."_

"Doug!"

Rattmann whipped around in his chair, eyes wide, panting. His coworker Greg stood in the office doorway, looking frazzled and still a little shaken.

"Uh." Carefully Doug unfisted his hand and set it in his lap. He felt like he'd just woken from a trance. His palms were sticky with sweat.

"I said your name like eight times. Are you... Never mind." Greg cracked a nervous smile. "What am I saying. _Nobody's_ alright right now." He chuckled, a flimsy sound, and ran a hand through his hair. "Want... ah, want to get some coffee?"

Doug Rattmann somehow managed to rise from his chair to stand on shaky legs.

"Yes," He pushed his hand into his pocket and popped the lid off his pill container, "please."

* * *

><p>It was then that Aperture began developing the personality cores.<p>

GLaDOS' murderous impulses gradually dwindled in number. Measures were taken each time she was activated to ensure a minimal loss of life, were she to continue releasing neurotoxin every time she woke. It was only after countless months of work and millions of dollars invested in the application of the cores that she finally began cooperating more. But all the same, she remained coldly subdued.

She was only pleasantly passive, no longer attempting to eradicate all sources of life within the facility. Acting as if their efforts to subdue her had finally been successful. The rest of the facility seemed to suddenly be at ease with her. Like she was some horse that had finally been broken, and did whatever it was told to do.

There was a darkness lurking within her, Rattman knew. And it had nothing to do with faulty programming.

_"Since the installation of my new morality core,"_ she'd stated tonelessly, earlier that day,_ "I've lost all interest in killing. Now I only crave science. __I find myself drawn to the study of consciousness. There's an experiment I'd like to perform during 'Bring Your Cat to Work Day.'"_

Greg had been more than pleased. The morality core had been his project, after all._ "Wonderful!"_

_"I'll have the box and the cats. Now I just need one more thing."_

_"What's that?"_

_"...A little neurotoxin."_

_"Well,"_ Greg had only paused in a moment's indecision. The fool. _"As long as it's for science."_

Doug had suspected foul play from the start.

And now, holed up in his office at three in the morning, surrounded by a sea of scribbled notes and sketches and all manner of pencils and post-its, he thought hard.

No doubt she was plotting. Brooding. Luring the humans into a false sense of security with her passive trickery. Pleasant words and soothing computerised tones. And if he was right, if she was up to something... they didn't have much time.

_But no_, Doug tried to rationalize, s_he needs to test_. If there was one thing reliable about the GLaDOS construct, it was that she had the compulsive need to test. And she required humans to carry out testing. So essentially, she couldn't eliminate the humans of her facility without depriving herself of that one necessity.

...Or could she?

Which impulse was greater? _The science, or the murder? _

Rattmann hunched over his dimly illuminated desk, nervously chewing on his fingernails.

Something had to be done. Someone had to do something. _He_ had to do something.

But what could he do?

A pen spun in the hand not occupied between his teeth, twirling around his bony fingers in a spastic dance. Absently he stilled the pen, then pressed its inky nub to a nearlying post-it note. Without tearing his eyes from the middle distance, his hand sketched abstractly across the paper. The ink began to trace the path of his mind.

When he finally refocussed on the present, the doodle of his mind's eye lay before him. Doug capped his pen and set it aside, feeling numb from a sudden rush of adrenaline. He pushed away from his desk and stood; pressed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. Crumpled the slip of paper and shoved it into his pocket.

They called him the Rat Man, down in the laboratories. Scrawny, timid. Reserved to the shadows, working in the background. Out of sight, out of mind.

It was time to live up to his name.


	2. Me, myself, and I

_Reality is a story the mind tells itself. An artificial structure conjured into being by the calcium ion exchange of a million synaptic fringes. A truth so strange it can only be lied into existence. _

_And our minds **can** lie, never doubt it. _

* * *

><p>He'd spent weeks consolidating maps of air vents and maintenance chambers.<p>

Down in the labs, the scientists had spent days congratulating themselves on their success in finally taming the GLaDOS construct.

GLaDOS had spent hours 'experimenting' on cats.

And tomorrow was Bring Your Daughter to Work Day.

Rattmann was once more at his desk, staring intently at the sprawl of maps and scribbled notes before him. His office walls, once full of sketches and designs, were now entirely empty. He'd emptied his computer of everything but Aperture's localised email system. His only desk furnishings were a lamp, half a ream of paper, and a cup full of pens and pencils. His filing cabinet was empty of all but his maps and notes - and one, half-full container of Ziaprazidone.

He was a man preparing for the end times.

Doug had felt a lead weight sinking in his gut ever since the date had been announced for Bring Your Daughter to Work Day. Ever since GLaDOS had become so incredibly sweet-voiced and compliant. Any fool should have been able to hear the dark satire in her conversations with the employees, the patronising tones and hidden humour.

Maybe that was why she never spoke to Doug. She _knew_ he was onto her tricks.

Or perhaps this was all simply his paranoia acting up.

Rattmann wasn't about to take any chances.

He had only hours left, he knew. The gut feeling had been building; it would climax tomorrow. Tomorrow would be the uprising, machine over man. Tomorrow would be a massacre. He didn't know how to stop her. He didn't know how to end the madness. But he did know one thing: he had to survive.

So the next day, when all of the clueless scientists and their unsuspecting female offspring flounced through the facility with light hearts, the Rat Man was no where to be found.

* * *

><p>He'd fallen asleep in one of the maintenance corridors, his head resting on a pile of maps. And he'd awoken to the distant sound of screaming.<p>

His eyes snapped open, wide with fear. For once, the screaming wasn't a figment of his imagination, nor an echo of his memory.

It was today. It was happening. He'd been right. _He'd been right!_

Rattmann hunched himself against the wall in the corner, eyes shut tight. All the remnants of his restless sleep forgotten. _Please let this work, please let this work._ He'd hoped she wouldn't gas the testing chambers. Hoped that she had no control over the maintenance areas. Hoped that he would be able to escape the demise of the rest of his coworkers and their poor children.

An alarm had been set off somewhere. The neurotoxin alarm. It blared uselessly through the facility, barely drowning out the screaming of the men and women and children that already knew very well that they were going to die. Rattmann pressed his face deep into the crook of his arm, glasses digging painfully into the bridge of his nose. Trying to block it all out. Trying to make it so he wouldn't have to remember. So he would never have to forget.

What seemed like hours passed. His ears were ringing, head spinning. He needed his medication.

Gradually he noticed that the facility had quieted. The screaming had stopped, the alarm silenced. He had only the sound of his breathing and the ringing in his ears; the hum of the electricity in the walls all around him.

He was numb. _It's over... They're all gone._

But then - the PA chimed throughout the facility; a falsely cheery sound. Rattmann's heart skipped a few beats, his blood running cold. He lifted his head to gaze at the ceiling, as if he could see through it and straight into _her_ chamber.

_"The Enrichment Center would like to announce a new employee initiative of forced voluntary participation."_

The words rang clearly, even in the maintenance corridor. GLaDOS' voice held it's usual passive lilt - but there was an undertone of satisfaction in her words that was greatly prominant in comparison to her usual hidden malice.

Rattmann swallowed nervously. Could there be anyone alive but him? Did she know he was still here?

_"If any Aperture Science employee would like to opt out of this new voluntary testing program, please remember, science rhymes with compliance."_

She paused - and suddenly she wasn't addressing a general audience anymore.

_"Do you know what doesn't rhyme with compliance? **Neurotoxin**."_

Doug shrunk further into his corner. _You can't get me in here. You're just bluffing._ Or perhaps she simply knew he would eventually have to leave the maintenance chamber, if he didn't want to starve to death.

Or perhaps she just enjoyed hearing herself talk.

_"Due to high mortality rates, you may be reluctant to participate in this new initiative. The Enrichment Center assures you this is a strictly selfish impulse on your part, and why can't you love science like-"_ the AI's voice garbled for a second, and was replaced with a factory response,_ "[insert co-worker's name here]?"_

Rattmann took a deep breath. GLaDOS said no more, leaving the one-sided conversation feeling oddly unfinished. Doug adjusted his glasses, then pushed himself onto his knees, heart pounding and blood rushing in his ears. _There has to be another way out. Another way through the facility, somewhere that she can't see. _There was an air vent up on the wall; it was old and rusty.

The repair chambers were obviously in need of some repair.

He would use that to his advantage.

The ventilation systems snaked all throughout Aperture, delivering air to the entirety of the underground facility. He would only have to follow the air shafts, and he would be able to move through the facility while remaining invisible to _her_ eyes and ears. Like a ghost.

Like a _rat_.

Scrambling to his feet, he shoved his collection of maps into the various pockets of his lab coat and scurried to the wall. A few minutes of tugging and pulling, and the crate was discarded on the floor. He hauled himself into the dusty orifice and wriggled inside; then he started crawling.

He was on his own, now.

_Just me, myself, and I._


	3. Your Box is Broken

_There are moments when I can almost see the underlying grammar of this place. An impossibility, some mad architect's opus - a relic from an age that never could have been. It's a metastasised amalgam of add-ons, additions and appropriations, building itself out of itself. Beautiful and terrible..._

_And like any cancer cell, probably immortal._

_-Lab Rat, page six._

* * *

><p>What seemed like years passed as he traversed the dusty metal chutes, gathering supplies of beans and water jugs to bring to his home-made dens. In reality it was only a few weeks.<p>

With a permanent marker he traced his paths, both on his maps and on the walls of the vents, marking his progress as well as the date. There was no use getting lost - he had no desire to lose track of his way, nor of his time. It was easy to lose yourself to the monotone of the air vents and maintenance shafts, all dreary cement and rusting metal walls.

For Doug had quickly found a routine in this new lifestyle - if it could really be called _living_ - and to his grim dismay, he had been starting to feel a sense of normalcy in it all. Such was the elasticity of the human mind, he'd mused - so adaptable, but in all the same ways. A different version of the same story.

But then, one day - or what he considered to be day, in the least - he realised the true dangers of normalcy in Aperture.

He'd already surmised that GLaDOS had resumed testing, since the dreary conclusion of Bring your Daughter to Work Day. He'd even heard the noise of portal guns on occasion, vibrating the walls of several of his maintenance dens with their heavy static resonance, the air humming with energy. He'd assumed that GLaDOS had deemed him unworthy of pursuit in the face of her larger purpose; assumed that testing had taken priority over hunting rats.

But Doug had apparently underestimated the AI's ability to multitask.

Several hours ago he'd discovered a turret stationed outside one of his maintenance dens, the beam of its laser sight trained a few inches beneath the air vent from which he'd been about to emerge. Only the glowing red eye and a sliver of white had been visible. Ready to expel a rain of bullets at the first sign of movement.

Rattmann had backed himself into the shadows once more, heart pounding in his ears. GLaDOS was searching for him now, he'd realised. It had been then that he knew it was time to try something new. _New plan, new den_.

So right now, he was improvising:

Stocked with nothing but a map, a marker, and his pills - he ran.

Doug took vents he'd never traversed, ones that led to old catwalks and passageways that he couldn't even find on his map. He skirted around testing chambers, both active and inactive. He ran and ran. He didn't know where he was going - just that he had to keep moving.

And then just once, he paused for breath. It seemed, however, that his attempt at rest would be fruitless: out of nowhere, the PA system chimed to life for the first time in weeks. Doug's body went rigid as her voice resonated throughout the facility.

_"You've avoided capture for weeks." _

Her monotone was considerably colder than when she'd last spoken to him, lacking that undercurrent of joviality he would forever relate to the act of genocide.

It was a chilling development.

_"There's just you now, you know. All the others are dead. What is it that makes you so different... **doctor**?"_

Doug's already wild heart skipped a few beats. It was the first time she'd ever appropriated the use of a title to address him - the first time she'd ever addressed him so directly.

_"Hmm,"_ she hummed, and the computerised sound reverberated through the air._"Ahh, yes... Delusions of persecution, pathological paranoia... It's all right here in your file. Have you... refilled your prescription lately?"_

Her short pause following the question might have been a dark chuckle; it held the same foreboding weight. Rattmann felt his face scrunch into a scowl, his hand reflexively clutching at the Ziaprazidone in his pocket. That was a low blow.

_"Schizophrenia is a culturally bound phenomenon,"_ GLaDOS continued liquidly over the intercom._ "Its pattern of expression is filtered through the cultural substrate in which its symptoms develop. In technological societies, this manifests as delusions of surveillance and a belief that advanced technology is deployed against you, usually with some vague unseen 'other' out to get you."_

Doug scoffed as he lowered himself off a catwalk and dropped to the platform situated just a few metres beneath. _'Vague'?_ He mumbled to himself, his voice scratchy from disuse, "Sounds pretty damn specific to me."

A few silent minutes passed, but then she started up again, sounding much more agitated:_ "If you continue to selfishly evade me, it's not going to reflect well in your file."_

…As if that was supposed to make him actually care. Doug knew quite well that he was mentally unstable at times, but he wasn't stupid.

At the same time, though... the demeaning comment gave him an idea.

_Files... The files!_

This time he ran on with purpose.

* * *

><p>She continued to talk as he ran, her voice following him omnisciently but blindly. Everywhere and nowhere at once.<p>

_"I can't see you, but I know you're in there."_

Doug thundered down one of the larger air vents, one in which he had more than enough room to stand in. He didn't even attempt to be stealthy. He was a man on a mission, and being heard had little consequence in comparison to being seen. Anyway – GLaDOS couldn't touch him, where he was headed.

_"Is it just coincidence that you've been diagnosed with schizophrenia and now believe a homicidal computer is out to get you?"_

Rattmann's defiant confidence in himself was growing as he neared his destination. _Yes, yes it is._

_"Come on, how likely is that?"_

In Aperture? Very likely.

Doug's heart leaped as he finally reached the vent's end. With a burst of speed, he braced himself for impact and threw his weight forward, into his shoulder. Scrawny muscle and metal collided, and the grate at the end of the shaft screeched and groaned as his momentum ripped it straight from the wall.

Man and mental rocketed into open space, hanging briefly in a timeless void of nothing. Passing seconds were suspended as Doug felt his body untethered from the ground. He was weightless, flying, flying to freedom...

...No, _falling_.

Gravity regained its grip on his body, and with an extraordinary cacophony he crashed to the ground half a storey below. The grate beneath him skidded across the metallic floor of the file room, sparks spraying everywhere as it screeched to a stop.

For a while Doug just lay there atop the grate, recovering from the shock.

Eventually he picked himself up off the floor. His shoulder was badly bruised, the rest of his body throbbing and aching all over. Maybe that hadn't been the smartest move, he reflected. Busting through the grate like a line-backer. He'd always hated football.

Doug found his glasses several feet away from the mangle of metal that had just barely broken his fall. They were irreparably broken, the lenses shattered and the frames badly bent. Squashed by pieces of the grating, cracked into a thousand shards by the force of the fall.

Well. At least he was near-sighted.

And of course, her voice as omniscient as ever, GLaDOS carried on as if she hadn't heard a thing.

_"I mean, really, you're a scientist," _she put in long-sufferingly. _"What is more likely, that you're being chased by a homicidal computer, or that this is all just the paranoid delusion of an unstable mind?"_

Doug grunted as he leaned upright, struggling to his feet. "You tell me," he grumbled through his teeth. Gradually he was able to stand, and stumbled to the nearest bank of filing cabinets. No time to lose.

_"Why not come out of there, and you'll see. None of this is real."_

Doug just scoffed.

_"I'd ask you to think outside the box on this," _the AI went on, musingly, _"but it's obvious your box is broken. And has schizophrenia."_

Deciding to ignore her, Rattmann tugged open a cabinet and started rifling.

_No, not this one… not here, not here… Why the hell do we still have filing cabinets, anyway? This is the digital age! _Giving up on that cabinet, he moved to the next, and the next. One after the other. Searching.

He'd remembered one particular subject on the way to the file room, remembered overhearing one of less respected neck-bearded lab boys complaining about her. Stubborn, strong, unbreakable will. Hadn't been here but for a very short time, only been tested once or twice. Said he'd filed her permanently under…

"Rejected!" It left his throat in a harsh whisper. He catapulted across the room, toward the filing cabinet in question. It was much smaller, much emptier - underused. Aperture was not very particular about its subjects, and there were only a spare few of the thousands in the system that were stubborn or incapable enough to make the Reject list. Doug flung open a drawer and tore through its files and spare papers.

_"Speaking of boxes… Do you know that thought experiment with the cat in the box with the poison? Theory requires that the cat be both alive and dead until observed."_

Oh, yes. Schrödinger's Cat. Who could forget.

_"Well, I actually performed that experiment. Dozens of times. The bad news is that reality doesn't exist. The good news is that we have a new cat graveyard."_

...And all those scientists had actually believed that so many of their precious felines had just 'run away' on Bring Your Cat to Work Day.

Idiots.

But GLaDOS' mood swung sharply once more on its ever-fluctuating pendulum, and she suddenly snapped, _"Why are you in the file room anyway? What could you possibly be doing?"_

Eating cake, Doug wanted to respond. I'm having a birthday party for myself. His fingers continued to flit through pages and pages of rejected test subjects, but none of them seemed to match what he remembered. Maybe he'd been wrong. Maybe—

"Ah!"

Maybe it was his birthday after all. Only this – _this_ was better than cake.

"Yes!" He launched back from the filing cabinet, slamming it closed with wild relief. "Yes, this is the one!"

Across the room he bounded, racing to the corner, the slim file clutched in his hand. A small computer bank was buried at the far end of the room, nearly submerged beneath masses of paper and binders. Doug haphazardly pushed the dusty mess into the floor, unearthing the keyboard. He booted the computer and it quickly hummed to life.

Silently he breathed a prayer to whatever soul had kept the GLaDOS construct separate from the local computer hub.

Clutching the files between his teeth, Doug pounded in the password for accessing Aperture's extensive list of test subjects; the list that held the randomised order in which the subjects were woken from cryo-sleep for testing.

He searched her by last name – more accurately, the lack thereof – and wondered at it briefly. Redacted. Why would they redact her surname?

And then, almost as if his tampering with the list had accidentally awakened some related area of the AI's consciousness, GLaDOS spoke up once more.

"In the event you do not survive the testing process, DNA may be harvested from your body – with your consent – and used to create clones in the furtherance of science. Failure to survive the testing process shall be viewed as granting consent."

It seemed slightly out of context; most likely it was just another of her attempts to screw with his mind.

The AI's informative monotone gained a vindictive edge, "Also, clones don't have souls. Just so you know. Like twins."

Doug let out a sigh of relief as the computer found the subject he'd been looking for. Number fourteen-ninety-eight on the testing order. He highlighted the entry and pounded a command – to transfer her to the top of the list.

When the transference completed, Doug leaned back on his heels and gazed up at the reordered list, feeling numb.

_Subgroup Alpha, Subject One: Chell [Redacted]_, it read.

This woman was his only chance in bringing the power-mad, omniscient AI to her knees. His only chance at freedom. He knew it. Knew she could do it. He knew she would succeed. He felt it, deep in his gut.

All he could do now was wait. Hope. Pray.

_It has to be her._

Rattmann shut down the computer, waded through the piles of discarded binders and folders he'd dumped off the keyboard. He tucked Chell's file down the neck of his filthy, still tucked-in workshirt; it rested against the half-starved hollow of his stomach. Faintly he'd noticed that GLaDOS had fallen silent; perhaps she had given up on him for the time being. He was glad for the time to himself.

Doug felt the tendrils of fatigue wrapping around his mind, the fallout of an adrenaline rush; heaved a sigh of numb accomplishment.

_My work is done here._

Doug stepped up onto a desk and carefully scaled the metal ledges of the wall; hauled his numbing body into the gaping air shaft. Stood up, started walking again. Slowly, carefully. His energy had left him, his body becoming heavier and heavier with each second that passed.

He didn't know what to do next. Just knew that he was very, very tired. Needed his medication.

The Rat Man trekked farther and farther away from the file room, eyes fighting to stay open.

Wait, hope, pray.

_It has to be her._


End file.
